


Losing Dogs

by aameyalli



Series: Ikaros Stories [2]
Category: Guild Wars 2, Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, M/M, canach says fuck.... once, there's blood, this stands alone its not a sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-11 15:29:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20155855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aameyalli/pseuds/aameyalli
Summary: Canach is hurt, stranded for a night in Maguuma with the Shining Blade agent Anise sent to tail him. He’s pretty sure anything that could go wrong… already has.





	1. Chapter 1

Slowly, Canach peeled himself up from the black and clinging jungle earth. The belly of Maguuma spun around him, a too-bright smear of shadow and green. 

He felt the stinging in his hands first, scraped raw where they’d hit the dirt to spare his face the impact. Then the ache in his shoulders from hanging off Ikaros’s glider (and then Ikaros himself). Last and dizzyingly, he remembered the gunshot. The hollow crack of the mordrem sniper’s rifle. A dull impact and a starburst of pain. Ikaros’s shout when Canach let go. He felt the wound, hot and cruel, exploding in his left shoulder, and the ooze of warm sap down his back.**  
**

Grunting, Canach crawled forward on his hands and knees. His ears were ringing even louder than the buzz of Mordremoth’s closeness but his vision had cleared—cleared enough, at least, to see his own hands curled with pain and exertion beneath him, soaked with gold, and the roots of a great fallen tree spreading like a sun’s rays ahead. The gnarled halo would provide some cover and something to lean on. Small mercies.

He heaved himself against the tree’s base, slumped so his ruined shoulder wouldn’t touch its dirty, moss-furred surface.

When he said he wanted to scout the mordrem camp “alone,” this wasn’t where he’d imagined the outing would take him. Crash landed in some Mother-forsaken hole, so deep down that the canopy was lost in a haze of mist and distance. Losing sap. And really alone, not just the line he gave to Rytlock and the others when he needed to speak with his exemplar.

Anger swelled like bile in his throat, drowning out the pangs of what a weaker man would call hurt. He should have known Ikaros would literally drop him and leave him to die, first chance he got. The man was Shining Blade, after all. He should’ve expected—didn’t know why he’d imagined—

“Canach?”

Oh.

Ikaros sauntered out of the undergrowth, brushing sticky dirt and jungle debris off his arm. He looked frustratingly intact, and almost cheerful. "Where are ya, buddy?”

In the interest of not bleeding out, Canach chose to ignore his dozen or so problems with being called _buddy,_ and being called_ buddy _by this man in particular. He braced himself against a root, hoping to push up into a less pitiful slouch. Instead the movement jarred his shoulder. Pain knifed through him, cutting off his breath, and shadows squirmed at the edges of his sight.

Before he could gather himself enough to yell, he saw Ikaros’s dark eyes land on the far side of their crash side and widen sharply. The exemplar’s expression twisted. His mouth went slack. Canach could only call it despair.

“Oh-h-h no.” Ikaros rushed forward, slipping on the soft ground, and skidded to a breathless stop next to… his glider, mud-splattered and crunched into a thorny mass of vines, comically bright and sad as a broken kite. Ikaros lifted it out tenderly. His brown hands traced over the swirling gold paint, the splintered wood. “Oh, baby, no…”

“Excuse me,” Canach said loudly. “I’ve been shot.”

Ikaros looked up, startled, and then infuriatingly, unbelievably, flashed him a smile. “Aha! I was looking for you.”

“Very diligently, I see.”

The exemplar sat back on his heels, casting one last mournful look at his glider before standing and padding over to Canach. “You’ve been _really _shot, huh?”

“Is there—” The pain swelled again, and Canach’s voice broke off in a snarl. He felt sick to his stomach now. “Is there any other way to be shot?”

“Well, sure,” said Ikaros, indicating a splash of vivid red on his arm. Canach would have taken it for paint, if it wasn’t still oozing. “You see, I’ve only been slightly shot.”

“Why haven’t you dressed that yet?” Canach barked. His own outrage surprised him. It was just a shallow graze. Canach had done worse to him in Southsun. But even with his own sap glueing his fingers together, he didn’t like seeing Ikaros’s blood.

“I was very diligently looking for you,” Ikaros said with a wounded pout. “Take off your armor. Or—yeah, no, I’ll take it off for you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Gods, Canach. Just let me see how bad you’re hurt.”

Canach scowled.

“I’m gonna lift you, okay chief?”

“You are one insufferable nickname away from—"

“Hup we go.” Ikaros hooked his arms under Canach’s and hoisted him forward and up to his feet.

Canach couldn’t bite back the whimper as his shoulder stretched and pulled. Then his face was buried in the other man’s broad warm chest, encircled in his arms, and the waves of nausea seemed to still. He was minutely aware of Ikaros’s breathing, artificially measured like he was trying to keep calm, and of his own, shallow and fast and clogged with pain.

_…Meeting your gods,_ he was going to say. There didn’t seem much point in finishing now.

The exemplar’s hands fumbled down Canach’s back. “How does this even work?—Ah! Found it!”

Canach felt a pinch in his side as Ikaros released the rough bark clasp that held his cuirass together. The armor fell away in two pieces, and Canach was left standing in a thin undershirt, uncomfortably deep in the exemplar’s embrace. A shudder ran through him. They’d been closer than this before. Slept together before, in the angry humid summer nights when Anise had first brought her new pet convict to the Reach, and in the terrible shadow of the wrecked Pact fleet when it felt like they would’ve warped and snapped like metal if they hadn’t done_ something_ ill-advised.

But even then Ikaros hadn’t touched him like this, cautious and light, sounding out the damage like he had with his wrecked glider.

Then Ikaros was moving away, around his back. The inward rush of fresh air hit Canach like a slap.

“Good news,” came the chipper voice from behind him. “Our friend back there was a pretty bad sniper. Hit your shoulder blade, so it can’t be deep.” A moment’s pause. “You do have bones, right?”

Canach growled.

“Okay. Be cool. I’ll ask again when you’re drunk.”

“What’s the bad news, you moron?” Canach ground out.

“Your armor was slowing the bleeding, and now you’re a mess. I’m gonna, I dunno, put it back on.”

"Clean and bandage it.”

“I’m gonna clean and bandage it.”

He let Ikaros ease him to the ground and paw clumsily around the wound. Canach’s eyes were closed, squeezing hard against the urge to throw up, or worse, lean into the exemplar’s touch and lose the last speck of dignity he had tonight. Ikaros uncorked his canteen with a familiar pop, and Canach exhaled at a splash of blessed cold against his shoulder. Then Ikaros started sponging at it with a piece of wet cloth, and Canach was squirming again.

“The bullet’s still in there. Should I try to get it out?”

Canach made a noise like an offended cat. “With what?”

“I have lots of sharp objects,” said Ikaros conversationally. “Secret knives. Sickle. Three kinds of war fan. This stabby thing in my sleeve, that’s for special occasions. I could use this big thorn?”

"You’re incompetent.”

“Well, yes,” Ikaros said.

“Attempt surgery on me and I will remove your eyes.”

“That’s a smart choice, really smart, I’ll just bind it up.” A moment later, Ikaros sighed to himself and mumbled what sounded like “she’ll buy you a new one.” This was followed by an agonizingly drawn-out_ rrrrrrrip_. It could only have been part of his dandyish blue armor. Canach almost felt bad.

The pressure of Ikaros’s makeshift, no doubt childishly done dressings were a relief Canach hadn’t thought to expect. The burning dulled to a heavy throb, and his stomach began to settle now that he couldn’t feel his armor sliding on fresh blood. He didn’t open his eyes, savoring the calm that was spreading through him.

Until something touched his cheek.

Canach recoiled explosively, hitting out with his still-armored hand. His fist met Ikaros’s jaw, and sent him reeling.

“Ow, _hell_-o,“ said Ikaros, rubbing the spot. "Someone’s touchy. I was just making sure you hadn’t swooned on me.”

“I don’t swoon,” Canach snapped. “And you’re hardly my type.”

His look was insufferable. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“We should dig in here. It’s getting dark.” Canach said it to cover the guilty flare of his glow, but it wasn’t a lie. The toxic green of moss and leaves was steadily draining, replaced by forbidding blue shadows and neon points of bioluminescence, the palette of a Maguuma night. Far too late for their rambling band of “heroes” to send a search party. They’d be huddled around a smokeless fire by now, no doubt_ luxuriating_ in self-pity for having lost Canach. They should be feeling bad for _him. _Stranded in the guts of the jungle at night, with present company.

“Do you think they’re talking about us?” said Ikaros, who had crossed the hollow and started cutting down vines with his “stabby thing” while Canach was distracted. “Well, talking about you.”

“Who, Rytlock’s little gang?” Canach kept his face obstinately blank.

“Yeah.” Ikaros carried his armful of vines over to the fallen tree and began festooning the roots with them, like he was hanging garlands on a palace balcony. “Do you think they’re worried? You told them where you were going, didn’t you?”

“Aching for your lady friend? I’m sure Lady Meade is falling to pieces without you,” said Canach, with a sour note of implication.

“Kas doesn’t know I’m here,” Ikaros reminded him. His voice was light, and for a second Canach felt dirty for trying to get a rise out of him. What a joke, grasping at jealousy when he knew what was between the two nobles, knew it was the kind of honest, easy friendship Canach would never be capable of. “I was thinking more about Taimi, anyway. Kid’s crazy about you.”

That caught him off guard. “What?” Canach spluttered.

Ikaros shrugged. “She is.” Then, apropos of nothing: “Shelter’s done. I…” He threw a confiding smirk over his shoulder. “…camouflaged it.”

Canach squinted. The exemplar’s "camouflage” was a tangled mess of vines and fallen branches. He’d made a sad, strange attempt to decorate it with rotten Maguuma lilies. The tree looked ten times as suspicious as it had before he started. One of the glider’s scarlet fins poked out of it, bold as a flag.

“We’ll be dead by morning,” said Canach.

“I did a great job. Dibs on first watch.”

Canach glowered. “The Mordrem. Will._ Find_ us.”

“Alright, alright!” Ikaros shook his head in bewilderment. “If you wanted to watch me work, you just had to ask.”

He rubbed his hands together and blew on them like a street magician, sending translucent pink insects zipping through the night air. His illusion swarmed over their tree, and when it faded the log was gone, replaced by a perfect mirage of the jungle behind it.

Ikaros turned around beaming. “Praise me,” he said.

This was the part where Canach called him a hopeless waste of life force, lashed out, dug in. But a sharp twinge from his shoulder quieted him. “Not bad,” he said stiffly, and crawled inside the hidden tree.

At some point, Ikaros had made up a bed of moss and soft sawdust. Canach dropped into it gratefully. He was snoring before the illusion settled behind him.

**…**

Mordremoth found him quickly that night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canach has a bad dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: some nightmare imagery and (sylvari) body image in this section. final part coming tomorrow! <3

_ Mordremoth found him quickly that night. _

Canach was dreaming of an airship, the glass and metal deck slicked with moonlight and the wings moving like fish fins through night air. Someone was standing with him, leaning far over the rail, elbows braced, watching the flow of stars and blue-black clouds around the ship's hull. They were talking and Canach wasn't listening, and he felt safe.

Safe enough to uncurl his hand from the chilled metal railing and brush it over their cheekbone, cup their jaw.

Prem's short, neat beard felt nice against his palm. The other man smiled, and the tiny lines around his eyes and mouth were beautiful. "You didn't get a word of that, did you?"

"I do my best to ignore your idle prattle," said Canach, without a drop of venom. "Not that it matters, since you _ will _ keep talking."

"Yeah, I will," said Prem, curving into his touch. "After a brief intermission."

They were close to the edge, Prem's hips against the railing, but Canach wasn't afraid of being dropped, wasn't even angry at being lifted off his feet so Prem could deepen the kiss without bending over.

They met each other in a point of explosive warmth. If anyone had looked up from the ground, he thought they’d see it like an uncurling sunburst, like an extra star, like all the hot colors of Prem’s favorite paints. Prem’s hand was at the small of his back and he was smiling against Canach’s mouth, breaking away for a second to laugh at himself before coming down again, and Canach had never been one for maudlin thoughts, for describing anything with words like _ sunburst, _ but he also should not have known what “safe” felt like, had never felt it before, not as a sapling, not in the Dream, and here, _ here... _

Canach only had a split second's warning—the sickly sweet hum of the dragon drawing close, folding itself over the arches of his mind. 

And then it was blazing, furious daylight, and the airship was falling. Plumes of fire curled up the hall. The sky was streaked with hot white smoke.

The deck tilted, and Canach fell against it hard, sent sprawling, rolling down the smooth glass slope. He scrabbled for a handhold, but there was nothing for his hands to catch on. Kicking and clawing, he felt himself slam into the opposite railing, now below him, the only thing holding him up, like thin arms cradling him above the hungry sea of cloud.

Canach looked up and saw Prem dangling from the upper rail, dangling by one arm, his legs swinging in empty space. "Canach, what's wrong with you?" he was crying out.

Canach looked down and saw his own hands. Sickeningly, he felt a shift under the skin. He felt them transform, warping and blackening, sprouting cruelly hooked spines, and the change was crawling all over him, squirming through him, until he was nothing but thorn, a hunched and twisted monster with too many teeth to close his mouth around.

_ What's wrong with you, what's wrong with you? _

He called to Prem, and all that came out was a hideous roar.

An engine blew out with a deafening _ poum. _The airship tipped back again, throwing them together in the center of the deck. Prem scrambled to his feet, scrambled away, and he was holding a sword that wasn't his, holding it level with Canach's throat.

The hatred that burned through Canach was more familiar than any "home" he'd ever slept in. So Prem was afraid of him? He should have known.

He launched himself like a wolf at Prem, bowling him over and pinning him down. The sword skittered out of the exemplar's hand—naturally, _ naturally _ he wouldn't know how to hold one.

Prem was choking, writhing in pain but Canach wouldn't let go, couldn't let go, his fingers fastening like a locked jaw around the exemplar's throat, and it didn't feel good, it only made him angrier to see blood springing out of Prem's brown skin and dribbling between Canach's new thorns, and it wouldn't get better until Prem went still, why wouldn't he just shut up and lie still?

"Look at you," said the Pale Tree's voice, a warm breath of sweetpea against his ear. "You sharp, ugly thing. Why don't you come home?"

_ What's wrong with you? _

His shoulder sparked with pain.

_ "Canach!"_

He woke to the faintest touch ghosting over his arm. "Canach," Prem repeated, rough and low. 

Canach shoved him away and rolled onto his good shoulder, stomach heaving. The sickness was back, bitter in his throat. He gagged, but nothing came up. He was dizzy. Burning. Short of breath. It was so loud in his head.

Prem hovered over him. "Can I touch you?"

Mutely, Canach shook his head, and felt the warm shadow of Prem's closeness pull back.

Canach spat, just to get the taste of the dragon's voice out of his mouth. He was conscious now of the dirt his cheek pressed into, moist and cold, of the scraping song of jungle insects, and of fine cloth spread over his shoulders. He recognized the small cape from Prem’s armor. He’d mocked the man for wearing it into the jungle, called him a joke. Now the cool fabric felt like a kiss from Prem's gods.

Without lifting his head, Canach turned his eyes to the exemplar. Prem’s brows were creased, his lips pressed tight in a worried frown that carved his dimples even deeper than a smile. Canach could see the lines clearly, though they seemed to wiggle and shift with the strange light playing over Prem's face.

Belatedly, Canach noticed the source. A billow of sparkflies, blinking around his head. A few were real and twinkling yellow. Most were the pale pink light of illusion. Canach watched them winking, moving like smoke. He'd always thought Prem's unformed magic was butterflies, like Kasmeer's and Anise's.

The unsteady light pooled in his dark eyes.

And Prem had freckles. A cloud of darker brown over his cheekbones and nose. He didn't know how he'd missed that.

"It's Mordremoth, isn't it? Are you alright?"

No. No, he wasn't, because more than anything, more than freedom, more than quiet, he wanted to surge up and kiss Prem on the mouth. He wanted the surprised huff of breath on impact, wanted Prem to laugh against his lips, wanted those big careful hands on his back again. He wanted to be folded into the other man, to feel nothing but warmth and see nothing but blue and gold and brown.

And then he thought of thorns. 

Canach pushed himself up to sit against the tree trunk's inner curve, his legs folded a safe distance from Prem—from Ikaros.

"I've told you already, Exemplar. That... _ thing _has no hold on me. It's like a fly in my ear."

_ "Exemplar?" _ he echoed. The dimples vanished. "Sure. Whatever you say, criminal. Just like a fly."

"I'm taking next watch," said Canach.

“No point,” Ikaros said. “I can’t keep the glamour up if I’m not awake. Besides, you need the beauty sleep more than I do. You're pretty banged up, and whatever _ that _ was, it didn't look restful." Canach gave him a sharp look and he backed down, raising his hands in mock surrender. "You know what? Fine. My camouflage was great anyway. Who needs illusions? Go bleed on yourself all night, Canach, you're a real big hero."

He didn't know which part of what he'd said had offended Prem— _ Ikaros _ . He’d never come off as the caretaker type, and he usually took Canach's temper like it was part of a game, like Canach’s barbs and Prem’s smiles were the same kind of move, matching cards at an unrigged table, doing no harm. Canach knew better. It wasn’t fair. Canach was losing, and the phrase “being played” had never been lost on him.

At least Ikaros had the sense not to offer his hand, and stood back coolly as Canach hauled himself upright and shoved through the illusion, his shoulder buzzing with pain.

He sat outside for a long time, listening to the creaks and rattles of the jungle night, the occasional shrill of a hunting raptor. His eyes roved over the foliage, his shoulders tensed and waiting for the hulking shape of a mordrem guard to break from the shadows and finish the job.

Nothing stirred except the tea-scented air and Mordremoth’s voice, curling perfumed and motherly through his mind.

_ What’s wrong with you? Don’t you want to come home? _

Canach kept his eyes moving. He had no home.

_ Look at you, dear. Look at those thorns. You’re half changed already. Don’t tell me you’re shy. _

That one wasn’t worth a response, but he fanned his hand out anyway, separating his fingers so he wouldn’t have to feel the tiny prickles between them. 

_ Tsk. _ The soft cluck sounded like Anise. _ Are you worried that he could never love a monster? _

Back into a fist, convulsively.

_ I wouldn’t fuss_, said Mordremoth_. Won’t you see for yourself? _He’s about to fall asleep. __

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Canach said out loud.

_ His illusions are falling. Come_. _ Just a peek. _

Canach didn’t move. 

_ You’re going to miss it. _

No.

No, Canach was a sylvari who valued privacy. If Ikaros _ was _ wearing glamours (unlikely, he would have had to keep it up for hours), he didn’t care what was under them. That was between Ikaros and his gods (and probably Anise), and it hardly mattered because Canach didn’t trust him to begin with. Besides which, if he let Mordremoth in, it could make him see whatever pleased it. No illusions ever really _ fell _ in Maguuma.

This was a cheap trick, and a clumsy one at that. If Mordremoth thought Canach was so weak to curiosity—

He pushed back the vines and looked at Ikaros.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rock bottom and a climb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is when canach says fuck. (tw for references to past abuse)

_ He pushed back the vines and looked at Ikaros. _

The exemplar was freshly asleep, like Mordremoth promised. He was sprawled on his stomach with the backs of his hands cushioning one side of his face, and wisps of dark hair dipped across his forehead and caught in his long lashes.

He snored. Just a little, like an oversized cat.

Canach's held breath went out of him in a gust of relief. Ikaros didn't look any different. The same big, clumsy, pretty, annoying man he'd been...  _ enduring _ ever since Anise assigned him to Canach's case.

He should've turned back then, the satisfaction enough to shake off Mordremoth's cajoling.

Instead he knelt down inside the hollow tree, and moved his hand to Ikaros's face like he had on that imagined airship. Instinctively, almost against his will, Canach's traced his thumb along the shadow under Ikaros’s eye, the hollow of his cheek and blurred edge of his beard to the corner of his mouth, dimpled again from whatever he was dreaming.

A sharp edge on his gauntlet caught against Ikaros’s skin, drawing a pinpoint of red. Canach flinched back, swore under his breath as Ikaros shifted in his sleep and mumbled "Don't go."

In a fizz of pink sparkflies, his glamours fell.

It started with his tattoos, the feathers that rippled in peacock blues and greens from the base of his skull down to his wrists. The pattern curled off of his bare arms and fizzled into nothing. That one made sense. Canach had never seen ink that shimmered like that, or believed Ikaros had the pain tolerance for needles.

Then his hair. Black moved through it like ink dropped into water, like a blossoming oil spill. The color suited him, made his lashes look still darker, his skin more gold than brown.

But the starburst shock of silver at his temple, so at odds with his young face—that, Canach couldn't wrap his head around. He knew it could happen, from grief or terror or torture by magic, but what could be  _ cosmic _ enough to break this man, this laughing mirage, Anise's pet exemplar, so-called favorite of the gods?

An asura's shrill laughter echoed in his head.  _ What's wrong with you, petal? _

Then he saw wounds. Minor cuts and scrapes springing up on Ikaros's arms and back and neck, bruises opening like night-blooming flowers, some blue, some half-healed green, others the harsh magenta that meant blood under the skin. Impressions of blades and thorns and teeth and falls, even a tiny burn scar, the size of a thumbprint, in the hollow of his throat. It looked years old.

He hadn't treated any of this. Hadn't even tried. The focus and raw power it must've taken to hide it all with glamours, hide it for weeks or months or...

Canach's breaths came cold and fast. "Damn it, Ikaros."

And then his last illusion broke, and Canach saw the rest of the scars, and he looked away.

Canach was a killer. He wasn't squeamish. But this...

This.

Among Ikaros's freckles were flecks of iridescence, like mother-of-pearl fragments inlaid in his skin. Shards of opal fanning out around his eye, flashing in the inner curve of his ear, trailing down his neck. They were beautiful. And Canach knew them.

They were the stain of a mesmer's hatred. The mark of a mind so mangled by illusion, so torn by psychic energy, so utterly  _ violated _ that it had burned itself to nothing.

Canach had only ever seen it on corpses, when Anise had finished a bad interrogation and told him to clean up. He doubted there was a mesmer alive other than the Countess who could do this much damage.

Was there anything left of Prem in that body?

For the second time that night, he locked his jaw against the urge to vomit.

Mordremoth's pity reeked of blood and flower petals.  _ You see? _

He saw.

_ He's empty now. Nothing to love you. Nothing to hate you, monster or not. _

Canach's hands trembled.

He'd known that Ikaros was different in the Reach. Smooth, precise, and unsmiling, so devoted to Anise he might've stopped breathing if she hadn't ordered him to go on. Not much like the trickster who chased him over hot sands at Southsun, shooting off illusions like firecrackers and calling out "Banter with me, criminal! C'mon, isn't this fun?" Nothing like the Prem he'd come to tolerate in Maguuma.

He’d assumed the difference was simple as this: they’d hated each other then, and now they… didn’t.

But to think of brainwashing. To think of Prem stumbling in a haze of things that weren’t real, trying so hard to scour Anise's handprints from his mind that he erased himself completely. To think that all this time Canach had been fighting back to back with, talking with, dreaming of, _fucking_ a painted puppet, an echo, a mimic of someone Anise had destroyed. To think that this man with his dimples and freckles and hands was everything Canach had ever feared becoming—mindless, broken, piloted by someone else...

To think that Canach had given himself into the same woman's hands, and called it redemption. If he tried to turn back now, what would she do inside his head? What had she done already?

He wanted to tear into the jungle and run until his feet were gold.

_ But you don't have to be like him,  _ said Mordremoth.  _ Come to me, and let me fill you with harmony. _

Maybe it was right. If everything Canach had imagined was true, maybe it would be better if neither of them ever made it out of Maguuma.

Prem shifted slightly, nestling into the moss. "Where are you," he said, to someone in his dream.

Something settled into place, deep in Canach’s gut.

He didn't know if Mordremoth could see him, or if it was watching only through his own eyes. But he rolled his shoulders back anyway, pulled his lips back in a shade of a snarl.

He knew one thing about scars that Mordremoth didn't seem to: nobody earned them without fighting first.

And maybe Prem had lost already.

But on the other hand...

He brushed Prem's hair back from his face and tucked it behind his ear, exposing every opaline scar to moonlight. "Still here."

"Don't go."

Canach said, "I won't."

* * *

Somehow they'd survived the night without incident, which only left getting to high ground, shooting off their single flare, and hoping their "friends" were the first to answer it, instead of the mordrem. Or worse, pocket raptors.

"Tell me," said Canach, as they scaled their cliff at crawling pace, in the silver-pink light of early morning. "What's the worst that would happen, if the others saw you without your glamours?"

Prem would think he meant the disguises. He'd already described the one he’d chosen for today: a pale, serious sylvari in Priory blue. (“He looks like he’s got a real stick up his butt… It’s funny because he’s made out of sticks… It’s alright, Canach, you’re allowed to laugh at genius.”) But Canach was imagining splinters of opal, black hair, bruises and a tiny burn.

"Well—unh!" Prem's handhold crumbled, showering them both in dust and gravel. He swung for a moment before grabbing another ledge and climbing higher, inch by aching inch. Canach's shoulder was agony. "Kas doesn't know I'm Shining Blade. I don't think she'd be in love with that."

"Kasmeer Meade would forgive a knife while it stabbed her."

"Yeah, well, I don't  _ want  _ to stab her," Prem said reasonably.

Canach pulled himself up with a grunt of pain, careful to avoid the holds that had given way under Prem. "Is that all?"

"Rytlock hates spies, he might bite my head off. Not to mention Taimi, Taimi's ruthless, she'd probably poke me with all kinds of..." Prem sighed. "Listen, okay, maybe I'm not on stellar terms with the Commander. What’s it to you?"

"Is it so unfathomable that I might want to know you better?"

"Ha!"

There was a long, strange pause in which Prem seemed to be waiting for a punchline.

Instead, Canach took a steadying breath and called up, "I was bluffing about Mordremoth. It’s not like a fly. In the slightest."

Another beat passed, and then Prem said, "Okay." Just that, but his voice was gentle.

"Watch your footing, idiot."

Prem had been about to put his weight on a loose-looking rock, but shifted to a different foothold at the warning. It held firm. A moment later his head cleared the top of the cliff, and he threw himself neatly up over the edge and out of sight, trailing pink magic. 

His puzzled face reappeared quickly, then his strong, tattooed arms reaching down for Canach. "You're going soft on me today. Something wrong with you, chief?"

Canach gripped his arms and let Prem pull him up, onto solid ground. The sky curved around them, bright as pearl. He fell on his back beside the exemplar, chest heaving, shoulder throbbing, and almost smiled.

"No," he said. "Nothing."

And maybe he was lying.

But on the other hand…

Maybe he could live with that.

**Author's Note:**

> i blow a kiss to mitski's "i bet on losing dogs," which will always be about these idiots to me


End file.
